4 Career-Related New Year’s Resolutions (and 4 Tips for Keeping Them)

Its January. A time of the year when we all make New Year’s resolutions, and we’re pretty sure you made some too. For those of you who have made New Year’s resolutions for a better work life, we wish you nothing but success. Here are some well-researched tips from Harvard Business School faculty to help you keep your career-related resolutions this year.

Resolution: To gain more respect at the office.

Tip: Wear weird sneakers to work.

Research by Silvia Bellezza, Francesca Gino, and Anat Keinan shows that people who wear funky outfits to the office are often seen as more confident and as having higher status than those who dress to fit in.

As writer Dina Gerdeman explains, “The researchers found that observers viewed a nonconforming person to have a heightened status and more competence, particularly when they believed the person was aware of the established norm but deliberately chose to make a fashion statement by wearing a standout style. This person was often viewed as autonomous; confident enough to act independently and create his or her own rules.”

Resolution: Work harder to meet the demands of a job where you’ve been failing to shine.

Tip: Ask yourself whether the problem is actually the job, not you.

Today’s jobs are expanding in terms of what is expected of people, but the resources people get to do those jobs is not expanding,” says Robert Simons, the Charles M. Williams Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. “People feel more pressure to own their roles and they’re stressed because they’re being pulled in a lot of different directions, but they’re not getting the help they need.”

Are you someone who feels compelled to share every sordid moment of your life online, yet are also aware that most job recruiters check candidates’ social media channels during the hiring process? Then maybe you rely on apps like Snapchat and Instagram Stories, which allow you to share photos that disappear from the web shortly after you post them or share them with friends. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Problem solved, right? Might as well Snapchat that lampshade on your head, right?

Wrong. It turns out that if a potential employer ever saw an embarrassing selfie of you, it may come back to haunt you.

The impression that a temporarily shared selfie makes does not disappear when the [photos] disappear,” says social science researcher Leslie K. John, the Marvin Bower Associate Professor at Harvard Business School and co-author of the paper “Temporary Sharing Prompts Unrestrained Disclosures That Leave Lasting Negative Impressions.”

Behavioral science research suggests that people who ask follow-up questions tend to land better jobs than people who don’t. (That goes for landing second dates, too.)

“Compared to those who do not ask many questions, people who do are better liked and learn more information from their conversation partners,” says Alison Wood Brooks, assistant professor and Hellman Faculty Fellow at Harvard Business School, and co-author of the paper “It Doesn’t Hurt to Ask: Question-Asking Increases Liking.”

“It’s an easy-to-deploy strategy anyone can use to not only be perceived as more emotionally intelligent, but to actually be more emotionally intelligent as well,” she says.